Fau, Hospitals Join Forces

November 6, 1997|By GLENN SINGER Staff Writer

Florida Atlantic University has signed agreements with Boca Raton Community Hospital and Columbia Palm Beach Healthcare System to bolster medical research by hospital staff physicians and FAU professors.

Under the agreements, hospital staff physicians will become eligible for appointments as FAU research professors in areas such as biology, psychology, chemistry and biochemistry, said John Wiesenfeld, dean of the College of Science. They also will be able to apply for grants through FAU's Division of Sponsored Research, Wiesenfeld said.

In turn, the hospitals and willing patients will be made available for university research programs, the dean said.

``These umbrella agreements are designed to facilitate individual projects and essentially cut through red tape,'' Wiesenfeld said. ``If a doctor wants to conduct research or a faculty member and students want to develop a project, this clears the way for cooperation between the university and the hospitals.''

Viewed as a way to help develop a strong biomedical science program at FAU, the agreements would augment a plan to allow medical students to take their first two years of medical school at FAU and then transfer to the University of Miami for two years of clinical work at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.